


Going On

by bluflamingo



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Disabled Character, Gen, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Post-Canon, Stargate Atlantis AU: Vegas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 18:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/641988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluflamingo/pseuds/bluflamingo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's voice is the last one Cam expects to hear on the phone late one night</p>
            </blockquote>





	Going On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [colls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colls/gifts).



"'lo?" Cam fumbled for the light switch, barely able to get his eyes open. His hand came down on a pillow instead of the night-stand he'd been expecting, then again when he tried to turn over. 

"Hello?" Right, phone. He'd been woken up by his cell ringing, and now it was talking to him. "Um, I'm looking for Cameron Mitchell."

Cam squinted at the ceiling, which might actually have been the wall. "What?"

"I'm trying to find Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell, I'm not – is this him?"

"Not –" Cam stopped himself from saying the rest of that sentence – God, he hated being woken up when he'd taken something. "Who's this?"

The pause at the other end seemed to drag for a long time, or maybe he just dozed off again. Whichever, his eyes were closed when the man on the other end of the line said, " _Is_ this Mitchell?"

Cam did his best to push himself upright and actually be more awake than asleep. "It's –" He couldn't find his clock, but it was still dark outside the curtains, which made it not a good time for weird phone calls. "-Late. Who are you or I'm hanging up."

The silence went even longer this time, then the man, sounding incredibly uncertain, said, "This is John. Sheppard. You gave me this number, told me I could call you. I don't know if you remember."

Cam dropped his head, taking an oddly shaky breath. John Sheppard, like a bolt from an Air Force blue sky, a bright, sharp memory of his last days before he'd started training with the 302 squadron. Probably the last person he'd expected to reappear, years later. 

"Um – this is Mitchell, right?"

"Yeah." Cam rubbed his eyes, trying to shake off the fog of sleeping pills and confusion. "John?"

"Sorry, I didn't realize the time. I just –" John sighed. "I screwed up. I didn't know who else to call."

"Are you in trouble right now?" Which, no, obviously John was or he wouldn't have called. "Are you safe right now?"

John laughed, not really like he was amused. "Yeah, I'm safe."

"Okay. I can't –" Cam's eyes closed and felt like lead when he tried to force them open again. "I'll give you my address. In the morning. Come here in the morning."

"I don't even know which state you're in."

"John, it's the middle of the night. You woke me up, I haven't heard from you in years, you said you're safe. I'm not sure I'm even awake right now. Please."

"Okay. Give me your address. I'll – I'm sorry."

Cam gave the address, still no clearer on where John actually was in relation to him. "Turn up, okay? I don't want to track you across the country."

"Yeah. Yeah, okay."

*

In the morning, Cam checked his phone, half-expecting that the call had been a dream. Instead, there was a new number in his received calls list, and a call long enough that he really could have had a sleeping tablet fogged conversation with John.

"What do you think, Jasper?" Cam asked as he fastened the golden retriever's leash. "You think he's going to show up?"

Jasper whined, nudging Cam's good knee softly. Cam reached down to rub his ears and sighed. "Yeah, buddy, that's what I figured."

*

John didn't show up that day, and the next day was Monday, back to work, which meant Cam couldn't take his sleeping pills, and didn't sleep, not really. Monday was hell, too many hours behind his desk, so that he could barely walk by the time he got home, his hip and back a rock solid mass of pain. Janna from two doors down showed up to take Jasper for a run before Cam had even gotten his coat off, and brought soup as well, which was a good enough excuse for Cam to take his painkillers early, drifting into a haze of exhaustion and relieved pain.

Tuesday and Wednesday were better, out and about checking in with his cases, Thursday was mostly meetings, and then Friday was the first day of his three day weekend, which he spent with his counsellor, then physiotherapy for a while, and then coffee in the afternoon with Simi and his niece and nephew, since Cole was out of town for a couple of weeks.

When he got into bed that night, he spent far longer than was reasonable debating whether to take his sleeping pills. It had been a week, and no more word from John. Cam vaguely remembered extracting a promise from John that he'd actually turn up, but this was John, John in the kind of crisis that resulted in middle of the night phone calls to a guy he hadn't spoken to in years. Cam wasn't exactly holding out hope.

He took the pills, and fell asleep waiting for the phone to ring.

***  
Sand. Sand and motor oil, the heat shimmering in the distance, making everything unreal beyond the airfield. Cam knew he was dreaming, because that was what he always remembered of his last tour before the SGC, the smell of motor oil and the shimmering heat.

That, and Sheppard and Holland. They'd been out there for a while when Cam arrived, but Cam had known Sheppard before, so the two of them had taken him in, or maybe he and Sheppard had taken in Holland, Cam didn't know. It didn't matter. In the dream, he was sitting in the mess, watching Holland run her fingers through her short, dark hair, saying something that Cam couldn't hear while Sheppard laughed – at her, with her, a little of both – his head tipped toward Cam, inviting him to join in a joke that Cam couldn't hear and didn't remember. 

So alive, both of them, happy and perfect. Cam knew, by then, that he was being tapped for 302 training, that his tour would be cut short and he'd be leaving them behind, but it didn't matter. For one single moment, he was with them, the US Air Force's best and brightest, the two people he was closest to after Ferguson.

***  
There was a buzzer, short bursts and then one long one, like an alarm, like – Cam struggled up slowly from sleep, feeling the moment the dream slipped away and the buzzer became his apartment door, not a base alarm. 

Outside the bedroom door, Jasper barked, which meant someone unknown. He didn't even bark for the postman, these days. 

"Coming," Cam shouted to the dog and his visitor. He'd had ample time to learn that people didn't usually wait around long enough for him to pull his head together and make his body work. The pain wasn't too bad, maybe a two or three, and no shooting sensations up his bad leg when he put his weight on it. "Hold on."

Jasper sniffed at Cam when he opened the bedroom door, then sat back when he realized Cam didn't have his cane.

Whoever was on the other side of the door wasn't moving at all. Cam fumbled the lock a little, still fuzzy from the drugs, and rebalanced himself to get the door open. 

"John," he said stupidly.

John lifted his head from where he'd been contemplating his boots. He looked older, even more than their years apart could allow for, and worn in a way that Cam recognized from looking in the mirror some mornings, from some of the men and women who came into his office. "Hi," John said, relief unmistakeable in his voice. "Um. You said I should come, so..."

"Yeah." Cam nudged Jasper aside, and opened the door the rest of the way. "Yeah, come in."

*

"So, er-" John shifted from foot to foot in the kitchen doorway, his eyes flicking between the padded counter edges and the dog bowl in the corner. "You're out of the Air Force?"

Cam fumbled the coffee filter, brain still fuzzy with sleep. "Five years now." He lifted the cane he'd grabbed, which brought Jasper over to nose his knee until he put it back on the floor. "You?"

John ducked his head, rubbing the back of his neck. "Yeah. Yeah, I was – I'm a detective."

Cam kept his hands on the coffee machine, trying to make sense of that, John out of the Air Force, a police officer, in trouble. He couldn't imagine anything short of a major injury that would get John out of the Air force, and even if he'd gotten discharged, Cam couldn't see him not finding a way to keep flying. Which he wasn't, and he seemed injured, but too recently for that to be the reason he was out.

It was blurred, but he remembered John saying, "I screwed up."

"So, you're – what are you doing now?"

Cam swallowed a sigh. He'd half-forgotten how annoying John's tendency to dodge everything was. "I work with disabled veterans, getting them into work. Do what you know."

"That's what..?"

Cam turned enough to see John watching Jasper, and shook his head. "He's not because of my leg." It would have been easy to let John think that, but John had come to him for help after years apart, and that meant giving a little trust. Not enough to explain about the mental impact of almost dying while fighting off aliens – if John was even cleared to hear about it, which he probably wasn't – but enough to not let John believe a lie.

The silence stretched out, nothing to break it but Jasper's snuffling and the drip of the coffee pot. Cam half-wished Holland was there, and not just because that would mean she'd survived; John had always seemed to talk more easily to women than men, and his and Cam's on-again-off-again relationship hadn't been enough to get over that.

"I'm sorry," John said finally. "About the other night. I didn't realize the time."

"It's fine." Cam grabbed two coffee mugs.

"Milk –"

"No sugar," Cam finished with John. He turned slightly, in time to catch the surprise on John's face. "I remember," he said, quietly.

John nodded. He looked away, staring at the sink for a long moment, then took a deep breath. "The Air Force threw me out. After Holland died. And I got mixed up in some stuff I shouldn't have in Vegas, when I was a cop, and then –"

Cam lowered himself quietly into a kitchen chair, watching John's ducked head. "And then?"

"Six, seven months ago, there was an explosion in the desert."

Cam nodded when John glanced up. Sam had mentioned it in passing, that the Air Force had been called in to deal with it. "You were there?"

"Trying to do the right thing. The day I called you, I finally got medical clearance to go back to work."

"You –" The way John moved, like he was still damaged. The twitchiness, the phone call, the request for help. Cam took a sip of his too-hot coffee, buying himself a moment to integrate that into the rest of the confusion John had brought up over the last seven days. 

"Except I quit my job already, and they weren't interested in taking me back." John dropped into the chair opposite Cam's and reached for his coffee mug. "I didn't want to stay anyway, but I couldn't think of anywhere else to go."

He looked up then, finally meeting Cam's eyes, and Cam couldn't look away. He knew he should, knew he needed to tell John that they could be friends, they could maybe even try for something they hadn't been able to have in the Air Force, but John had come to him, and Cam had basically made a new career out of looking out for people who needed it. Five years of physical disability and post-traumatic stress, five years of figuring it out on his own and getting stable; Cam's therapist would probably throw her hands up in despair when he told her, but there wasn't anything else he could say.

"So stick around here for a while." He tried for a smile, which felt awkward and wrong. Two lots of injury and trauma in one house, and John didn't have his own Jasper to make it bearable. "We'll figure something out."

And none of it mattered, because John slumped forward slightly, like part of the tension holding him up had just slipped away, and said, "Thank you."


End file.
